Important components of the winding process, for example yarn clearers, splicers, or speed sensors, are developed and marketed by various independent suppliers. These individual components operate largely independently, and either evaluate their determined data themselves or send the data to a central machine unit. From the central machine unit, the data is, in turn, sent to the winding station, where it is further processed either by the same component or by another component of the winding process. However, logical linking of the individual components does not take place.